Live from New York it’s…The Daily Show

After an unsuccessful attempt to get tickets to The View (I know). Ayla’s Mother got us tickets to see the Daily Show instead (WOOOOOO!!!). So a few weeks ago we headed down to NYC for a few fun filled days hanging out in the big city. The train ride went a lot better then my previous week’s trip to TARCon, where I missed the train by minutes (it literally pulled away, as I was running towards it). After trying to meet up with Ayla’s friend Hilary at Grand Central, while Hilary was trying to meet up with us at Penn Station, we eventually met up and went out for sushi with Ayla’s father. The dinner can be summed up in one word…Awkward.

After dinner we headed over to Queen’s and went for some drinks at Hilary’s neighborhood bar. The night started innocently enough, as we sat there chatting, while some regulars played some darts, but as the evening wore on, the locals took an interest in us, and we ended up drinking the rest of the night with them, and it was a blast. They were an unusual group of characters, but it was a great time (although my liver might disagree). The next night was even weirder as we ended up spending the evening drinking with this Icelandic guy we met on the Lower East side. Always a weird time in NYC.

Now it wouldn’t be a trip to NYC if I didn’t eat as much as I could. We got the standard awesomely crappy hotdogs as well as a street pretzel, but it doesn’t stop there. Now I would love to say that I got to eat at Per Se (Thomas Keller’s NYC version of The French Laundry, who is a personal idol), but that place is a bit out of my price range, I did get to see it though. Looks nice. They were featuring a truffle tasting menu that looked incredible. In the same building however, Keller did open a Bouchon Bakery which was more in our price range. I love the Bouchon cookbook, and cook from it quite a bit (the macaroons from ‘The Most Expensive Cookies Ever’ post were from there), so it was exciting to get to see even just a few things from the book, and I did get to try the macaroons.

On Tuesday we headed off to see the Daily Show, and the taping was awesome. The set looks a lot more bleak and small in person, but just seeing Jon Stewart up close was pretty amazing. The show was a good one, and it was interesting to see all the stuff he said which wasn’t written on the teleprompter. I wish I could show some photo’s from the taping, but we weren’t able to shoot in the studio, so oh well. The one thing I was amazed at was the fact that there were no screw ups; I figured there would be at least one. I guess at this point they’ve all pretty much gotten it down.

After the taping we headed back to our hotel room to rest up, but around 10pm we were feeling hungry again, so set out to look for some sushi. Now in Lenox, good luck trying to find a restaurant in Lenox that serves after 9 pm, so even having the option was a fun experience. We wandered around the Time Square area, and finally found a sushi place called Kodama sushi, which turned out to be amazing. It was pretty cheap by NY standards, but the fish was incredibly fresh and tasty. Highly recommended. They even had cool T-shirts.

The best meal we had though (at least for me), was at Momofuku, a noodle joint in the Lower East side. The place was incredible, and really elevated what a noodle shop could be. The steamed pork buns were tasty, and the pork was incredibly moist and tender. It has an open kitchen so it was fun to just saddle up to the bar and watch the whole process. The owner David Chang was voted one of the best new chefs of 2006 by Food and Wine Magazine, and he recently opened a new place on 2^nd Ave, which I’m going to have to try next time.